The present invention relates generally to conferencing, and more particularly, to dynamic desktop conferencing.
A market is emerging for conference room solutions in which the conference room table behaves as a display that can be driven by a computer. Current solutions, like those provided by Mitsubishi and HP, allow a person's finger to serve as an input device to a table display. Details of Mitsubishi's conferencing device are provided at http://www.merl.com/projects/DiamondTouch. This device uses capacitive coupling. The number of users is limited, and people must be sitting in a special chair in order for this solution to work. While this is a good solution for a single computer desktop (just like a projector), it does not help in solving the problem of having more that one person present that might like to share part of the table to show their own data.
Other attempts have been made to develop a desktop conference table display, but they are also limited in terms of the number of people that may participate in a conference and in terms of functionality of the table.
There is thus a need for solving the problem of dynamically managing multiple desktops and expanding on the table functionality, while removing the need for people to carry laptops.